Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast - Inside the Mind of a Corrupt Lawyer | Goodfellas, Scams & More

Episode Date: August 30, 2024

Inside the Mind of a Corrupt Lawyer | Goodfellas, Scams & More

What's supposed to be happening couldn't happen without fraud. His big clients were the Goodfellas guys. We're maybe six months ahead of the FBI coming and doing a raid. So if you think you're going to lose your law license, what do you do? And this revelation comes over me like that all these years where I thought people were doing things to hurt me or the world was against me. I was really the one who was doing the bad things. parents were middle-class Jewish refugees from the city. And we moved out to Long Island, basically in the Great Exodus, where everyone made from Brooklyn and Queens and everything

out to Long Island. And it was kind of like the swing in 60s. And as soon as possible, my parents completely abandoned us because they were doing crazy stuff out there, like all the other parents were doing. They were living, living the good life. You know, this is the first time. And we were all left to pretty much raise ourselves. It was a whole culture out there. Like, we're talking about like the 60s like flower children kind of thing. Well, my mother, they were actually older than that. My mother was a party girl. I mean, like a full blown on party girl. She later became like a Manhattan party girl. Okay. And my father had been in a family business and it failed. And then he had to kind of go out on his own.

And as soon as my mother figured out that my father wasn't going to be the great success that she had hoped for, you know, the guy who's going to lead her out of Brooklyn and lead her into the promised land, she started seeing other guys. She had affairs. She was doing all kinds of crazy stuff. I think my parents were probably swingers. Right. That was going on in my neighborhood out there in Long Island.

And, you know, like, we would peer through the windows and, like, watch our parents have parties on Saturday nights. And we didn't know what was going on, figured it out later. But it was a whole class of people, mostly Jewish kids, who we had to raise ourselves. And it was, it was a little daunting to try to figure out, like, what to do, how to do it. You know, we became drinkers and druggers very early. My mother took mother. I'm sorry. When you say we, you mean like you and what, you have a brother?

Me, my brother and my sister. Okay. But I'm talking about everybody in my junior high school and everybody in my high school. It was just this whole era of kids whose parents had basically abandoned them. Okay. And if you ask any kid from Long Island, they're going to tell you the same story. Okay. It was just, it was crazy.

And it was the first time anybody had, you know, a little bit of money. We weren't upper class. We weren't, but we weren't rich. but nobody was poor. Right. And they weren't going to bed hungry. You didn't not have any clothes, you know. And so my mother was into mother's little helpers, you know, so she had uppers and downers.

And there was this big bar in the house. That was this big wraparound bar in one of the rooms where they kept all the liquor. And, you know, it was in a locked cabinet, which, of course, we knew where the key was. I was going to say that the mother's little, like Colby doesn't know what mother's little helpers are. Like, literally, do you? Okay, I know you never heard that. So mother's a little helper is basically my mother went to a diet doctor. Right.

And the diet doctor gave her uppers to diet, you know, so amphetamines, and that would get her up. But to go to sleep at night, she would have to take these downers, second and alls, two and alls, placidils. And she had them in jars of like 500 apiece. I mean, it wasn't like now. and so once I started drinking and so I'm stealing vodka or something from the bar

and I'm literally sitting on the floor of my mother's bathroom and underneath the medicine underneath the bottom there's just these jars of pills and so after school my friends and I are sitting there like drinking popping pills trying to figure out

what they would do and what they would do and sometimes we would get it right like we wanted to take downers and so we were taking downers and sometimes we saw something that we didn't know what it was but they were really uppers and so I had sleepovers with my friends

but they would stay over the house and we took uppers but didn't know it and then we'd like have to push my mother's car out into the street because we wouldn't have started in the garage and then we just did joy rides all over Long Island you know completely stoned out of our minds

and that was my childhood. Right. That was my childhood. That was what it was. We were one exit away from Jones Beach and we would go to the beach almost every day either by by Schiff because it was right across the bay. And we were, it was not, it was no character building whatsoever, none. Well, as I was going to say, it does not seem like Long Island. Like that doesn't, I don't, that doesn't, that doesn't, it's not the picture I have of, of Long

Island. Well, imagine Steven Spielberg from E.T. Right. That neighborhood in E.T. But like the kids are on mescaline. That would basically be. I was thinking a very, you know, I think of middle class and tranquil, you know what I'm saying. Like there's like, but then I, I mean, I was raising the side. No idea. This is what growing up in Long Island was like. And just, you know, having the first inkling or the or the first money that anybody ever really had, but not enough money to that we could actually go to private schools and things like that. Did you get, did you ever get into trouble or anything? Like, ever, the cops ever pull over the cars?

Did you ever get in trouble in school? Anything like that? I was always in trouble. I was always, I was a, but I was one of those kids who was, who was like a smart kid in all the AP classes. But I hung out with my, my friends in the parking lot. Right. And it was hard to navigate those two things because, you know, the kids in the AP

classes were the kids who were in my class. is when I was, like, in elementary school and junior high school. We all knew each other from the neighborhood. But I was hanging out in the parking lot. And the crazy thing is, is that the smart kids wanted to hang out with the kids in the parking lot, not the other way around. And so I was kind of like their key to be able to go hang out in the parking lot with the cool kids.

So are you always getting good grades? I got good grades until the kind of like the lifestyle and the drugs kind of like prevented me from doing a lot of things and also there was so much disharmony at home you know my parents were splitting up and my brother and sister were having their own problems and and i i i could really not can i curse on this yeah i guess well i really just could keep my shit together right well i was going to say because you know sometimes what happens is like kids are they're getting in trouble but you're getting straight a's and so your parents it's like you know he he's he's doing this but God, he's smart and he's doing, getting good grades.

And it's like, so it becomes kind of like a problem for your parents because they're like, I mean, he's getting good grades. He's doing everything right. He did get in trouble for this or for that, but it becomes its own kind of a quagmire for your parents to be in the situation where they're like, fuck it. Well, I was the easy kid of all the, of the three siblings. But I was not getting good grades because I was, I was drinking and drugging mostly and hanging out with this crowd, but I was getting very high test scores, you know, high SAT scores, all of that

stuff, which eventually is kind of what led me to college and then led me to law school because I tested really well. But I was kind of a late bloomer. In college, I kind of figured out that I needed good grades, at least good enough to get me into law school. Right. Why did you figure on law school? Why did you go to law school? I don't know. It was like I never really saw another path. I never, I always assumed I was going to become a lawyer. I loved it. I was kind of the problem solver in my crowd. I was the problem solver in my house. I just always saw myself as a lawyer. And I, you know, I really, and I also, I just wasn't adventurous enough to like go out and do something, you know, like take time off and go travel Europe in a backpack or something.

Right. With a backpack on, I just was not that kind of person. And so I feel like those are always kids of means, though, for some reason. I always feel like, and I could be wrong, but I always feel like those are kids that have something to fall back on. Like, you know, like they can, you can be a little bit more adventurous if you know when things go wrong. I can always go back to my spare bedroom or I can always go to my parents for help, you know, that sort of thing. Well, that's certainly the people that I met once I moved like the Connecticut, moved to Greenwich later on in my life. You know, I found people whose childhoods were like that, but mine was, we were probably one of the poorest families in our neighborhood, but we weren't poor. But these were all families that were

like really moving up the line in terms of, you know, acquiring wealth and becoming successful. And my family was just in Tatters. And before I moved to college, my father's business had failed. And so I couldn't go to a private school. I had to go to a public school. And I was like way, overqualified for this school I went to. And everybody knew it. I knew it. The teachers knew it. The professors knew it. And so it was like a playground for me. You know, I wound up kind of taken over the student government and taken over the school newspaper. And it wound up being this, this kind of exercise and how much I can get away with. And I didn't really know that it was like a precursor for going to wind up becoming criminal behavior. You know, I just, I had no respect and I had complete

contempt for authority. I did what I wanted. And, and I was allowed to get away with whatever I could get away with until somebody tried to stop me. And then when they did, I negotiated my way out of it. I was just thinking that, boy, that field, that sounds familiar. Where it's like, you know, I'm going to do what I want to do. And if I get caught, I'll talk my way out of it. And that works until you can't talk your way out of and it hits, you know, bam, you'll find yourself in prison. It took a lot of years to get there. Right. I mean, an example is that we were basically running the student government.

We were running the student budget. And I had a column in the school newspaper. So this is in college. I have a column in the school newspaper. So, of course, somewhere in my brain, what I'm thinking is I can use this column to interview professors. And it would introduce professors to the rest of the college, which on its face seems like a very nice thing to do. But of course, I'm bartering with the professors for grades. I mean, basically, I'll give you a good column if I'm going to get a good grade, but I'll thank you if you're going to get a bad grade.

And so I'm doing this, and it becomes, I guess, kind of obvious to the administration what I'm doing. doing because I'm basically running a rough shot over everything. And the president of the school brought me up to his office in the tower. And he just looked at me and he said to me, look, what are you doing here? I mean, these are like phys ed majors and these are fine arts majors. Like, what are you doing here? And I told a little story about how my father lost his business and all. And he said, listen, we just can't have you do this anymore. Like, you know, you got to like chill. And he says, how do, you know, how do we get you to stop? And I said, write my, you know, write a recommendation for me to get into law school and I'll retire. Right. And he said, done. And I gave up the

column the next week and he gave me a glowing recommendation. And, you know, a few months later, I got into law school. What law school? Well, I wound up going to New York law school. I got it, but I had to follow the money. We had no money. Right. And I was, so I went to New York. School in Manhattan. And I was working, selling shoes, putting myself through school. And by the time I became a senior in my third year of law school, I was selling shoes at Paul Stewart, which is one of the nicest men's stores on Madison Avenue. And I was in the shoe department. And I was meeting people who were like the, I remember, I was waiting on these two gentlemen and they were dressed beautifully. You know, I mean, the suits then, and the shoes then were expensive.

Now they're super expensive. And they're sitting next to each other, and they're kind of fooling around. And I'm helping them with their shoes. And I said to one of them, let me, can I wrap this up? And he said, sure. And he had to me his credit card. And his credit card said, president of Pepsi Cola on the credit card. Right.

And I'm saying, are you the president of Pepsi Cola? And he looks at the guy next to him. And he was like this. he goes, he goes, that's nothing. This is the chairman of the board. Right. And so these are the people who are selling shoes to. And I realized that, you know, I think I can sell.

Right. So when I graduated law school, I never got a job that would pay me even more than I was making at the shoe store at the shoe department. I was making a lot of money in the shoe department selling at that time $600 pair of shoes. So I decided to hang out my shingle. I said, look, if I can sell shoes, I can sell law. Right. But I had no idea what I was doing. Well, I always feel bad.

I was going to say, you know, the jailhouse lawyers. Yeah. Like there are some of the guys that are amazing. Oh, yeah. And then there are, you know, and I always think to myself, like, how many people's cases did you butcher until you got it right? I was like, there's that, that first 60 or 80 guys that, boy, those, those were horrible arguing. None of that worked.

You didn't get the good. Now you've been doing this for five years. It's like now they have the arguments down. They have, they can write a motion. But the boy, those first few clients, it's not great. You know, when I first got out of law school, my first job was, I wasn't the lawyer yet because it takes about a year after you got out of law school to become a lawyer. You've got to take the bar exam and all that kind of stuff.

So I'm law clerking with this, with this criminal defense attorney. His big clients were all the goodfellers guys, the real goodfellas guys. Yeah. Okay. So Henry Hill, you know, was played by Ray Liata. Right. Henry was his client. But Henry was at that point in the government witness protection program.

And this was like pre-Rico. So they didn't take away your money. So Henry's got all this. I like that. Right. Not bad, right? So Henry's got all this money, but he's in the government witness protection program, and nobody knows where he is. Now, maybe Bob did, because my boss was named Bob Simmel's.

And maybe he did. Oh, by the way, the sidebar his is that much later on, Bob served about 10 years for obstructive justice, witness tampering. And so he's in our support group now. Right. He is. He's a good friend of mine. So every morning, I would come in to the office. office and I would get a call from Henry Hill. And, and, you know, Hey, Jeff, how you doing? And I, I was like

his, I, I moved his money around. I did his, his, his, his trades on Wall Street. I called the banks. He, he couldn't. He was in Witness Protection Program. Right. So for the six months I was there, I was Henry Hill's like gopher. It was crazy. I did finally get to meet him, though. Okay. Yeah, I, it's funny. I have a buddy Wade who's really into, you know, into all the mob genre, the whole thing. And we had both read the book. Or did I read and he listened to it, I think, but wise guys. Wise guy.

Yeah, that was the name of the book. And then there was a second book that I think Henry Hill wrote about him being in witness protection. And it's insanity. Oh, yeah. Like he's behaving like he's insane and he's getting pulled over by the car. No matter what trouble he got in, the FBI would come in and say, no, no, no, no, or the marshals, U.S. Marshals, and they'd be like, no, no, you can't charge him with this.

No, no, no, you have to drop that. Nope, get him out of jail. No, no, he's okay with that. Like, because they were still, you know, people don't realize they think, if you watch the movie, you think, well, he testified in, you know, one trial. Yeah. No, he testified in like 40 trials. This went on for, you know, five, six, seven years he's on witness protection while he's,

he's putting away tons of guys and they're using him. constantly so but yeah it was amazing how he behaved on witness protection what a problem he had being on witness protection because he'd been a maniac his entire life and gotten away with it now you got to have the marshals trying to run interference for you and and my personality was kind of perfect for this because i was i had been out of control and i was and my my drug and alcohol you said had diminished at that point but not completely and this wacky wacky stuff is going on and I'm, you know, I'm drawn to the craziness. Right.

So. These are my people. That probably remains true today. So you hung out a shingle. I hung out a shingle. And I was renting a desk from someone. And that was for about three months. And then all of a sudden, a lot of business started coming in.

But I did not know how to handle it. You know, because when you're a young lawyer who's just starting out, just like one of these jailhouse lawyers that you talk. about you don't know how to practice law you know so I had enough work coming in that I had to go hire lawyers who were my senior like five years older than me right but I was the I was the rainmaker I was bringing in the business and ultimately that was my first firm that started and and I was just learning at this at this rate of just soaking up stuff of of learning a craft but What didn't happen was that I wasn't in like a large firm or middle-sized firm environment

where you learn the kind of nuts and bolts of all the character building and the ethics and everything else you need to be a lawyer. You know, I was, I was like, it was like Cowboys and Indian stuff. I was winging it. Right. And it was just like when I was growing up. It's like I never grew up. I became just someone who did whatever I was still.

someone who did whatever I wanted to do. And I never, other than like a few classes in law school, I really never understood the rules. I mean, I, and I didn't even have a good sense of right and wrong. I didn't. And so I just played it fast and loose pretty much as long as I could. at some point while my offices were still in Manhattan um the drugs and the alcohol were catching up with me yeah i was i was like decompensating and i had to kind of come to jesus moment around 1986 or so and then i didn't get sober but i did go into therapy and that helped a lot you know i mean at first i was like in a lot of therapy and everything kind of just tamped down where ultimately I had gotten married and had two children and I decided that I wanted to be around for my children, unlike the way my father hadn't been for me.

And I woke up on literally on January 1st of 1991 and looked at my ex-wife and I said, I can't do this anymore. I said, I'm shutting the office down in Manhattan. And we were living in Rye in Westchester County at the time, just north of New York. And I said to her, I'm shutting down the office and I'm moving it up here. And I'm going to make a go of it up here because I want to be around the kids. I want to be a dad. And why is that a big, I don't know the layout. I mean, I know, I understand Manhattan is obviously there's a, it's, you know, whatever,

upper middle class or, you know, more rich area. What is the, what's, what is Rye? Rye is the suburbs or? Rye is the suburbs. Rye is the last town before you get to Connecticut. So Greenwich and Rye are right next to each other. So they're two of the wealthiest towns in the country. Okay.

And we moved to Rye and, you know, and I probably bought too much house and I was becoming overextended and doing what, you know, what crazy 30-year-olds do. And driving cars that were too expensive and I was getting on the treadmill. Right. But I opened this office up in, in memorandum. Marinick, which was the next town. And I had no idea if any of my clients were going to come with me. I had no idea what I was going to find. I just knew that the New York life, Manhattan life, was burning me out. And I wanted to be a good dad and hopefully a good husband. But I didn't

really have the, you know, I didn't have like the, the willpower or the, or the, to like, just, just kind of stay sober. Right. You know, I wasn't in a program at that point. Things were moving along. I started getting some of the largest clients in the county, real estate clients,

and I'm not quite sure why it was attraction, but I was bringing them in. And, I mean, were you just, were you just doing any type of law, or was it strictly like, you just said real estate?

Is it corporate real estate? You know, is it, you know, criminal or is it just your, whatever is going to pay the bills? At the time, it was almost, almost anything that walked in the door. Right. You know, and but what happened was in the same year that I

moved the law firm up to Westchester County, I also opened a restaurant with a partner. And because you're not, you know, because you know, it's, like you're busy. Oh, yeah, because I'm, you know, because I'm, I'm a maniac. I'm, yeah, exactly. But I have a plan. And the plan is, is because it's this little restaurant that's right in the right area, like right on Route 1. You know, Route 1 goes all the way up from Florida, all the way up to Maine, right? But Route 1 is right there. And there's this little bistro that's for sale. And so I said to my partner, who's a chef, who was a Moroccan guy, but French trained. And I said, listen, if we open up this restaurant, basically this can be your breakout. But I want to set it up right so that it's attracting.

the wealthy people in the neighborhood and in the area, and I'm going to use it as a marketing device to sell me in my law firm. Right. So it didn't really make a difference if it made money or not. The idea was for it to attract business. Attract business. So that's what, of course, that's what happened. And but I would go up to the restaurant.

I had a manager in the restaurant, and then she knew everybody who would come in or she knew most of the people who would come in. And she would call me up. So I would go home from the office and I would have dinner with my kids. And then she would call me up and she would say to me, so-and-so is in the restaurant tonight. Do you want to come up? And I said, yeah. So I was only like five minutes from the restaurant where my house was.

So I would walk in the door and she was like this four foot 11 little bundle of energy, Irish bundle of energy. And she would come up to me and she would put her face like right to my chest right here. right and she would look up at me and she would say so and so so is at table one so it so is at table four so and so and she would give me the names yeah yeah and and of course everybody wants to talk to the owner you know I would walk around how you doing backslap everything else and this one particular night she said so and so is at this table and he's sitting there all alone and he's drinking and I think something may have happened so I go over to him and I put my hand on his shoulder how you do

and we knew each other casually. You know, he'd been in the restaurant before. He was a neighbor, but he had a big house on the water. And he asked me if I want to sit down and have a drink with him. And I said, sure. And one thing led to another and we talked for three hours. And at the end of those three hours, he looked at me and he said to me, he told me that his ex-general counsel for his company, and he was a real estate guy who had tens of thousands

of units of residential real estate. estate, very wealthy guy. And he said that his old general counsel had just been arrested and taken away in handcuffs. Now, this is like here. Hopefully that's a ham problem and not an us problem. This is the foreshadowing for everything else that plays out. And so this guy who's, who's a lunatic, is sitting there in front of me, he said to me, how'd you like to be my new general counsel. And I said to him, I said to him, you don't even know me. Right. That's what are you talking about? And he said, no, but I get a good feeling. I said, no, you don't hire a general counsel on a good feeling. Right. And he said, okay, you're going to have to go through a bunch

of interviews with all of my senior staff and everything. But at the end of the day, I make the decisions, and I'm telling you that I want you to be my new general counsel. So I wake up the next morning and I figure like, look, I was drunk. Right. Right. Like, whatever. You know, I'm just go to work. But I get a phone. call from someone in his office who said, you know, do you want to come in to the series of interviews? And three weeks later, I'm his general counsel. Okay. Why was the first general counsel arrested? Oh, well, this is a, there was a, you know, because we need to know, like, are you jumping into the fire? Oh, no. Well, there was definitely a fire. Okay. There was definitely a

fire. But the client, the guy who had now hired me, he didn't appreciate how big the fire was going to be. Because what had happened, what happened about a year later was that there was a full FBI raid and 100 agents and they took away every one of their files. I mean, imagine taking 20,000 tenant files. But I was there ahead of that. And I hadn't been there for the for the for the for the problems. I was now a problem solver. Right, right. Yeah, yeah. So You're not roped into this. I'm the one putting out the fire. What was the fire, though?

What was he doing? There was, well, he wasn't doing anything. Yes. It was the people who worked for him that were doing things, and they were robbing and blind. Okay. But the way they were robbing and blind was, is that this is like a third generation Jewish real estate family, and which I wound up representing a lot of, and maybe it's just my disposition to be able to deal with this type of people. They're very wealthy and they're very privileged and they're very entitled. So what I said to the client is, I'm not going to give you his name.

So what I said to him was, listen, if what, because I had spent a bunch of years doing real estate, you know, in the city. And I said, just like, I'm going to come in in the middle of the night and start reading your files. And I might be able to tell from reading your files, like what the pattern is, like what's been going on. and I caught some patterns. I did. Like what was supposed to be happening couldn't happen without fraud. It couldn't happen. I'm not going to get into the particulars of it.

So I go to the boss. I go to the guy who hired me. And I say to him, listen, I'm going to tell you what I found. But before I tell you what I found, I need to know, are you in on it? right i need to know are you right and he and he said to me i didn't do anything wrong and and i said well i think everybody says that yeah so tell me how tell me how you didn't do anything wrong explain to me in advance before i tell you how is it that you didn't do anything wrong and he looked right at me and he said because for the last two years which is when this was all happening

He said, for the last two years, I've been out on my yacht blown with hookers. Yeah, that's, yeah, you don't admit that unless it's true. You don't, that's not an excuse you use unless that's what's happening. And I said, this guy's cool. I mean, it's like, I mean, that's like saying, I couldn't have robbed the bank, you know, here. Why? Because I was burglarizing a house over here. And as it turns out, that was true.

Right. because there was so much money and he had a bad drug habit. So I told him what was going on, and of course he was ashen. He didn't really know what to do. And I said, listen, if what I suspect is true is true, we're maybe six months ahead of the FBI coming and doing a raid. So what I need you to do is I need you to approve that we're going to set up separate space, a war room. I'm going to hire people and we're going to, at that time, it was like you still

had like Xerox things. We're going to make copies of your most important records. We're going to keep them in my office so that they're privileged, you know, in this war room. And we're going to profile every case and we're going to be ahead of things when they come and they raid you and they do the seizure. And he looked at me like, you must be crazy. And I said, no, no, I'm serious. This this really could happen and I gave him a budget and he said let's do it and that's what we did right and for six months we did it and then lo and behold on the snowy winter morning of 1992 the two tractor trailers pull up and and it was like it was like the cavalry had come in I can't even tell you and it's not like when you hear from someone's story that the FBI kicked my door down

right this was a building right right and so there were hundreds of of of team members and computer team members and and and there were members who just sat with me and and and my team in the conference room negotiating attorney client privilege documents and and this thing went on and at the end of the day they took all the files and the next morning um um and i cannot remember whether or not the client was arrested that day. But his whole family was indicted and most of the senior staff were indicted. And it was this big, big mess, this huge mess. And we wound up hiring between 15 and 20 of the most well-known criminal defense attorneys in Manhattan because it was a Southern District of New York case. So we wind up hiring all these different law firms because

each person who had been indicted needed a separate law firm. Right. And the companies needed separate law firms. So now I'm in the middle of all of this thing and I'm the general counsel and I'm the paymaster. And back then the legal bill wound up being somewhere around $25 million. So now it would be, I don't know, close to $100 million worth of legal fees. And I learned everything from the best. I learned all about how to run these cases, how to manage these cases, what, what, and, and I was with, this is, this became my full-time job. Right. Even though I still had a firm and I still had other cases and other clients, this was basically what I was doing for five years. And, and when it finally resolved itself, um, and, and the client did great,

by the way. He went up doing great. He did a little bit of time. But, you know, in the interim, he was just making more and more money. I said, this is like what I want to do. This is my sweet spot. This is like, you know, me being crazy and me having this special and everything was together. I didn't know how to make a business out of it. But at that point, my, my drug use had increased. So it's, I'm sorry. So when you're saying this is what I want to do, You want to manage other, a massive amount of lawyers, or do you want to go into a chaotic situation and be the, like, I'm not. I want to be the specialty guide that you bring in when you have a crisis. Okay.

And I'm the lawyer who puts together all the lawyers. I'm the lawyer who oversees everything. I'm making sure everything's run right. I am crisis management. I'm crisis management, but as a lawyer, and they're submitting their bills to me, and I'm negotiating the bills. You know, the go-to person in a crisis. Yeah, when MCI goes down or Enron or something, you're the guy that come, when they're all scurring,

you're the guy that can come in and say... At that point, I felt adequate to do it. Colgate Total is more than just your favorite toothpaste. It's dedicated to advancing oral health. The new Colgate Total Active Prevention System features a reformulated toothpaste, innovative toothbrush, and a refreshing antibacterial mouthwash. All designed to work together to fight the root cause

of common oral health issues, such as gingivitis, plaque, and tartar. Use the full routine twice daily and be dentist ready. Shop the Colgate Total Active Prevention System now at walmart.ca. For non-public companies, I don't know that I could have done it for a public company, but for wealthy individuals who have either their own situations or have their own companies, I felt comfortable doing it. But what had happened is I also had gotten injured in a sports injury. And after the sports injury, I became addicted to prescription opioids.

And that was playing itself out. And I was doing a lot of opioids, even through the end of this representation. And so there I am now at the end of the 90s. And I'm deep into my drug habit. And then OxyContin comes out. and then it just went into overdrive. This client was gone now, and I just stopped paying attention altogether, and I wasn't showing up at work, and I was just doing these prescriptions.

I had no way of knowing, really, that that was the beginning of the opioid crisis. Right. You know, I don't consider myself a victim, but I was one of the early people who got hooked on oxies. Right. Well, you already had a pre-existing addiction, so oxies didn't help. No, no. In fact, it was like a jet fuel. So then what happened was the day came when we couldn't make payroll.

And mostly because I wasn't paying attention. And my office manager said to me, we can't make payroll. And what do you want to do? And I said, well, let's just borrow some money from the client escrow account because we probably had a few million dollars in there. It's a bad idea. Yeah. It was a very bad idea. Commingling funds or whatever that point.

Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Thief is probably more accurate. And she looked at me like, I was crazy. Yeah. I said, well, we'll just take a little bit and we'll put it back. And... Oh, see, I can't be here for this. Like back 20 years ago, and I'm like, yeah, that makes sense. I would have blown it off.

But, you know, now somebody said that to me, I'd be like, I can't be here. I'd have to leave right now. And it was just as simple as on her computer screen just... two buttons. Just move it from this account to this account. And, and I'm telling you, so many other things I could have done. I could have called my bank. I could have, I had cash sitting around. Yeah. I had friends. I could have called up, but I could have said, listen, I need a check for 50K, right? Whatever it was. No, not me. I'm, I'm so deep in it. So we do that. And it winds up, And I wind up doing it a few more times.

I wind up using it kind of as a wallet. Not long after that, there's a grievance that's brought against me. And when the grievance was brought against me, one of the things that happens is that they want to see six months of the escrow records. And it had nothing to do with that. Right. But that there's a grievance. We resolved it at a day. And they said, but it doesn't matter.

Of course, we want to see six months of escrow records. records. That's just what we, that's, that's our process. And in that moment, it was like my, my, I knew I was dead. There was like no way I was going to survive that. But I went out and I hired Ethics Council and lied, lied to Ethics Council, lied to everybody. I was still doing the drugs. And, and we fought it for a couple of years. And we were doing a pretty good job fighting it for two you're fighting giving them the six months? No, fighting, fighting the ethics complaint that was against me now because now they're like, now they think what I've done is I've stolen client money and, and actually there was no money lost. It was just that you could see all the ins and outs.

Yeah, so you're just borrowing from it, but you're putting the money back. Oh, yeah. Okay. I didn't realize that. I think you're just taking it. No, no. But I'm putting it back, but you lose your law license for that too. Yeah, yeah. So, while we're in the middle of that and I'm like getting more and more paranoid and like what like what do you do with like do you even bring in so if you think you're going to lose your law license what do you bring in more clients what do you do you do you bring in more clients what do you do you're bringing in more than how can you how can you honestly represent someone if you tell them well listen I might not be around here six months from now but I kept bringing in clients but everything was dwindling down and then 9-11 happened and when 9-11 happened it was like it just suck my legs out from under me. Like, everything I'd been going on had been too much for me anyway. And now I'm in complete despair. I decided I'm going to, I'm going to dismantle my law firm. Like, there's no way I'm going to survive all this. Why 9-11? What was specifically about 9-11? I don't know. I think it was just a straw that broke the camel's back. You know what I

mean, it was just like, oh, my God, like the world's coming to an end. Okay. But a month or two later, they're advertising these SBA loans, which are EIDL loans, which, you know, now from the, what does that mean? Well, you know, from the, from the pandemic and all these COVID loans, these were the COVID loans, kind of COVID loans, the PPP loans and things like that, that were 20 years ago after 9-11. So they were giving out these emergency loans, the EIDL loans, and they were like 30-year loans at 3%.

Right. And for businesses that were failing as a result of the economy. That's right. Okay. That's right. And because I was one county away from New York City, I was in the bubble of counties that were I could get EIDL money. But I called them up and they said, yeah, you'll probably qualify, fill out an application.

And it wasn't like it is now where they like. like email you stuff, you know, like there was actually how to go pick it up and I had to fill it out and right. So when I'm filling out the application, I'm so desperate and I'm so stoned and so scared that I lied on the application and said that I have an office a block away from ground zero at 40 Wall Street. Okay. Because I want to be like right in the zone and you know, right in the zone. And it wasn't exactly untrue because I did have conference facilities there, but I never used them. And I didn't have any economic loss as a result of losing them. But I know what I'm doing is I'm padding my application. And they already called me I'm approved. Right. So I'm out of my

mind. Right. So there's like no reason to do this whatsoever. But I do it. So they wound up lending me $247,000, which I promptly use half of roughly to pay off the credit cards I had been propping things up with because I'm thinking like, why am I paying 24% with the credit cards? I get 3%. When I have a 3% loan, of course, that violates all the covenants of the SBA loans because you can only use it for operating. Right. And I am now not only guilty of wire fraud, but I'm guilty of money laundering.

Because money laundering is when I took the money and gave it to myself. Right. I don't know it at the time. So a few months after that, I find out that my grievance case was going really badly. And this one piece of news came in, basically, that a former business partner of mine, who I mistreated, that wasn't surprising. I wasn't treating anyone particularly well at that point for a couple of years. And what he did was he turned like state's evidence against me. He wrote this 10 or 20-page letter to the grievance committee telling them everything I had ever done wrong.

And he was a buddy of mine. He knew what I was doing wrong. All right. This is getting worse and more. Oh, right. It's terrible. So the letter comes in and my lawyer sends it to me and I read it. And I said to my ethics lawyer, I said, are we done?

done? Is this it? And he said, yeah, we're pretty much done. And I said, all right, listen, why don't you call them up and tell them I resign my law license? And that'll be that. And he goes, all right, I'll do that for you. So I went to one of the doctors that was prescribing me the opioids and I got one last prescription from him and went home that night and waited to my wife and kids went to sleep. And once they did, I took the entire vial and tried to get myself. And so it was about 40 pills, probably. And woke up somewhere early morning in a pool of vomit all over. I was going to say, I've spoken with people, sorry to interrupt you. But as soon as you said that, I thought, oh, that's a bad idea. Because, yeah, almost all the time, you'll fall asleep.

and then your body will reject it and you start vomiting. And then you wake up, you thought, you think your, so your body will just reject. Not always, not always, but it will. But all I know is that for me, I know it was a legitimate attempt to kill myself. You know, whether it works or it worked or not, it was another issue. Oh, listen, sometimes it does work. Yeah. You know, that's the thing is that so if you're lucky, you throw it up.

If you're not lucky, it does exactly what you think it's going to do. And the thing, and the thing about is, is that, look, when I've, I've obviously spent, like, more than 20 years kind of thinking about it. And it was like, if you take a few, it lowers your, your barriers of inhibition. So, like, you know, taking one or two of them got me stoned. And then the other 38 went down pretty easy. And I think that's what happened. So my life's over. My career's over.

I know I'm going to lose my house. My wife, my ex-wife does not understand what's going on. And a few, I go through detox, and about a week later or so, in there somewhere, I wind up at Silver Hill Hospital, which is a rehab in New Canaan, Connecticut, which, by the way, is the same rehab that this client had gone to. That's how I know about it. Right. Right.

Because I'm shuttling him back and forth to this rehab during that whole time. And so for me, it was Silver Hill or Nothing. And I spent seven weeks at Silver Hill. And so that's kind of like the first part of the story, you know, that's like the, that's like the drinking and the drugging and the misbehavior and the and the criminality and and that's now like I don't even understand what the consequences are going to be. Right. I just know that that life. is over. Can I ask you a question going to the rehab? Were you, like after a week or two, were you accepting of being there? Or did you, after a few weeks, decide, like, I shouldn't be here.

I can do this on my own. Or were you like, no, no, no, fully on board. I'm all in. I need this. I was on board from the beginning, but I didn't really know exactly how crazy I was. You know, I didn't know that what I really had was bipolar disorder. Okay. And that had been fueling all of this stuff probably since I was a young adult or even a kid. So you're kind of self-medicating this entire time to feel normal? Yeah, well, yeah, exactly. And so. Your normality.

So there I am like, you know, first they have me like in the acute care unit where, you know, it's a lockdown unit and you're bouncing off the walls and things. And then they move me over to the main facility and maybe it's the first or second night. I'm in the main facility. and I'm not on any illicit drugs anymore, you know, I'm not on opioids, but they do have me on psych meds. And at the time, I'm guessing it was lithium, but it was something. And I bolted upright, like in the middle of the night, and I have this revelation because, you know, I'm in a, I'm in a bedroom there, but, you know, these bedrooms are proof. And they had me on 15-minute checks,

which means every 15 minutes, they've got to check on me. I don't know if you have ever seen a proofed room, but there's no hard edges, you know, breakaway hangers, everything. And I bolt up in the middle of the night, and it's like this revelation comes over me, like that all these years where I thought people were doing things to hurt me or the world was against me, I was really the one who was doing the bad things.

I was the one who was hurting them. And I'm like, like, it's like not computing. I'm like, like, what? And I start crying. And I realized my, you know, that I, my brain is just not functioning right. And I'm crying and I run down the hall. This is in the middle of, in the middle of the night. And I run to the nurse's station.

I'm crying. And I say to this nurse, I said, You know, like, I was the one who was hurting everybody. They weren't hurting me. I'm, like, babbling. And she puts her arm around me, and she said, I know, dear, I know. And she takes me into this little conference room that's behind the nurse's station, the kind of glass wall so you can see in there.

And she sits me down, and she takes out this, like, work, this loose leaf book. She takes me down. She opens it up. And what it says is, the name of the page is bipolar disorder and it lists like all of the things that someone with bipolar disorder has flights of ideas grandiosity at this list them all and as I'm looking at them I'm going that that that's me and they're giving me these meds and it's like oh my god it's like so yeah it's like at this point I'm like down like all in it's like yeah like like yeah like there's something wrong. So over those seven weeks, like friends would come visit me. And, and I said, and I remember once, I'm sitting on the, on the corner of the bed, and my two, our two best friends came to visit me. And I'm trying to explain this to them what I'm explaining to you now.

And I said, like, I must have been crazy. I must have been, you know, you must have seen I was doing drugs. You must have seen I was crazy. Why didn't you ever say anything? And they looked right at me and they said to me, we must have told you a hundred times. And I never remembered once. It was just complete denial. Right. That was the first time I saw my daughters. It went since this whole thing happened. And we're sitting on the front steps of the rehab. And they look at me. And at that point, they're like 18 and 14, and they look at me and they said, you know, Dad, we don't even know who you are. And it was the first time I said to them, I said, I don't know whom I am either. And it was like just such a revelation, you know, because I don't know if I was

playing a role. I don't know if I was trying to run to something, run from something. But I just knew that there was going to be a lot of pain, that their lives were going to get ripped out from under them right there. I mean, whatever we had or wherever we were, this was no longer the case. Right. They were scared. I was scared. Their mother was pissed as she should have been. But I got out of rehab and we went home to the house that we were not going to own very much longer.

And the day I got out of rehab, I went to my first AA meeting. And I did what I was told. We sat there in a circle. And when it got to me, I raised my hand. Then I said, I'm Jeff. I'm an alcoholic and a drug addict. And I need a temporary sponsor. And I got a sponsor that night, temporary sponsor.

And that started me in AA. And just last week, I celebrated 22 years of sobriety. So, you know, I took to it, you know. and I go every day. So, I mean, moving forward with the story is I spent all my time in AA. I wasn't working anymore. I was, I didn't know how I was going to support my family. I had a few dollars in the bank, which is good.

About 20 months after I got sober, I got a call from two agents who said, there's a warrant out for your arrest in connection with the false. representations you'd made on the SBA loan and like how did that even like how did that even you don't know I I have I have some assumptions one was that they had they had a third mortgage on my house and so whatever money when we sold the house whatever came out of the the excess that came out of the house had to go to them right but it wasn't the payoff in full there wasn't enough equity to pay them off in full so as soon as that happens, anytime that happens, they started an investigation. Right. So I assume that what

happened was, is that they started going through everything, and they went through the paperwork and everything, and then they realized, and then they made a referral to the U.S. Attorney's Office. I assume that's what happened. Right. No one ever told me, but I've been involved in... Enough litigation, enough cases. I've been involved in over a thousand cases since then, and I can tell you that's pretty much what happened. So it's now still within the like two-year bubble post-9-11. And I have to go present myself down at 500 Pearl Street at the federal court down there. And I drive down and it's like a war zone.

I don't know if you remember what was going on in Manhattan back then. But there were checkpoints and they were putting mirrors. under your car and and there were military around and and and and I felt like the worst person in the world. I mean, like this is like a war crime. And I met my lawyer and we and we walked into 500 Pearl and he handed me and he presented me to the U.S. Marshals and that was the first time I'd never had handcuffs on. And they brought me downstairs to a cell that was three floors below the federal courthouse where I sat for four or five hours and then they brought me upstairs to the magistrate's courtroom where I got arraigned and released on without a bond right

and they took my passport and you know all that stuff and I thought you know this was it I didn't have a friend left in the world I my money I I didn't know if it was going to run out I didn't know what was going to happen. My wife had already told me that we were over. Right. Very soon thereafter, she kicked me out. And I wound up, well, on the day she kicked me out, I went to my AA meeting in the morning. And I had been going to the AA meeting for almost two years at that point.

And I went to the meeting. And when it was my term to share, I raised my hand. And I said, you know, I'm Jeff. I'm an alcoholic. And I got kicked out of my house. And because they all knew I'd been arrested. Yeah. And I said, everything I own is in two valises, you know, two duffles in the back of my car.

Those are my, that's my clothes. And I don't know where I'm going to go. I have no money. I don't know where I'm going to sleep tonight. If you sleep hot at night, you know how disruptive that can be. Whether you're having trouble falling asleep, you're waking up sweating in the middle of the night or all of the above. That's where ghost bed can help.

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Just visit ghostbed.com slash Cox, and use the code Cox at checkout. Again, that's ghostbed.com slash Cox with the code Cox at the checkout to save a whopping 50% off sitewide. And now I'm going to meetings in Greenwich because we had moved to Greenwich, an apartment in Greenwich after we sold the house. And Greenwich is like pretty high rent district, right? So three guys came up to me after the meeting and said to me that you can stay with me. Yeah. And so for the next year and a half, until. I went to prison, actually, I stayed in guest rooms and on people's sofas as basically

a person without a home. My wife and kids lived in an apartment. And every penny I had went to that. But in exchange for like walking these guys' dogs and making sure their lawns got mowed and things like that, I had a place to sleep. And I had a lot. How is that humbling? super humbling right like um and in some ways it was like it was great yeah i i that's so funny i'm sorry literally i always say that like the the best i felt was like when i got out of prison i was like living in someone's spare room just super humbling but i felt so good but also like simple yeah i just like grateful i just felt grateful for all the things i've taken advantage of and and you're like and like i didn't have to worry about all those things like mortgages and car

payments and it was just simple I just got up in the morning and went to a meeting you know made arrangements to see my kids at some point during the day if I could and life was just really simple of course I met a woman in AA and we and who uh and we fell in love which is generally not a good idea to meet a woman in AA right but but it also been years yeah well You'd been doing, you'd been a part of, like, don't they say, like, the first year, like, do you not get into a relationship, but you've been doing this for years. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.

But, but I was definitely, you know, on the rebound from my marriage. And she, her marriage was breaking up to. And at first we just started hanging out with each other. And then we started dating. And by the way, we're married 15 years now. So, so that's, that's Lynn. and she was not equipped to deal with all this madness and where it looked like I was going to prison

and she's just not that type of person. And how like, what a bad bet I was. Like, what did she do with me? I mean, she's beautiful. She's a Greenwich woman. She has all these friends in town, but she was an AA, so she had a, you know, she had a drinking problem.

And we wound up, you know, getting sober together, in essence, my case was proceeding, and it took two more years to get sentenced, and for all kinds of legal reasons. But on April, on Easter Sunday, April of 2006, I reported to Allenwood Low security prison. Well, what did you get? I got, oh, I got 18 months sentence. 18 months? Okay. 18 months. I did go to downward departure. Okay. And the variance was because of all the good work I had done in AA. Oh, okay. So nice. Yeah, it was nice, right? It doesn't typically, you know, that's not the typical, typical thing unless they really believe it. Because a lot of people go for a variance and they just don't get it. You have to have something that's

pretty pretty significant to get one. Well, I was probably looking at like 21 months. So I got a three month, you know, downward. That was great. I'll take three months. Listen, I didn't even know what any of that stuff meant back then. You know, I was like, I was out of it. Right. So I reported to prison in 2006. And at that point, I was almost four years sober. And really found out that, you know, most guys, when they go to prison,

and they're like drinking and drugging right up to the door. Right. And I was like at this point a sober guy and I had been through the steps. And I had been like, you know, I, uh, I had already started my transformation, and I was going to be in prison, you know, roughly a year, a little bit more. And I was able to turn it into this kind of transformative experience. And it was fascinating. It was absolutely fascinating.

I mean, it was, I wasn't in a camp. So I was in, you know, I was in a low security prison with controlled movements and bars on the windows. But I had met people there that I never would have had an opportunity to me, you know, gang bangers. from Baltimore and this is a prison out in Pennsylvania. But a lot of good things happened in prison that, you know, I look back on that were great because it really got me in touch with myself and finished kind of the job of creating some humility in me. But I also found some spirituality in there.

I didn't know I would have and I got into shape. And so there's a whole print. prison story, which is not unlike most people's prison stories, as it turns out. But for me, it was profound. But when I got home from prison, you know, first I was in a halfway house and then I was on home confinement. And then I'm living in a very simple life at that point. And I start the volunteer. So did, real quick, did Lynn, that's your wife's name, right? Yeah. Did she come and see you while you were in prison? She came and saw me for six or seven times. Okay. And then I got my dear John letter from her. And, and I'm telling you, she's, it was like, if you got out to the waiting room,

if you, if you got to the visiting room, there's a sea of people, you know what they look like at a visiting room, right? And then there's this beautiful stately woman who looks like she should be on the cover of town and country magazine or vanity fair. It's like she was completely out of place. I mean, she's magnificent looking and just the way she carries herself. And the first time she came to visit me, you know, we embraced and then we sat down because you get that, because you're allowed like 30 seconds to hug, something like that. Yeah. So ridiculous. So horrible. Right. And so we sit, she sits down. And for the next two hours, she folded herself over in a, in like this fetal position and cried for two hours. We couldn't even

talk. She just cried for two hours. And at the end of about two hours, she looked up at me and the first words out of her mouth to me, other than, you know, the initial whole, the first words out of her mouth, she looked at me and she said to me, I hear everybody likes the cheese burgers from the vending machines. The biggie burgers or something? Or, you're like, big ass, ass with a disease name like a... Oh, that's right, right? So, so, and, and we didn't even know that there's like a protocol, you know, it's a protocol. I mean, she knew to bring the change in the bag, but, but it's like if you don't heat the burger

the right way or stick the chicken wings up the right way and it's frozen in the middle or you get yelled at, right? Like people are saying, like, looking at you're like, you're crazy. And so she's heating up these cheeseburgers because, like, They don't let the inmates anywhere near the, near the vending machines or near the microwave, right? And she's sobbing and we're sitting there, like, eating these cheeseburgers. And to me, it's the greatest thing in the world because I've been in at that point like six weeks. And she's trying to choke down the cheeseburger.

But it wasn't, it wasn't right. But I had a lot of friends visit me from AA and my kids visited me every month. And I had no idea. how much everybody was suffering on the outside. You know, I was oblivious to it. But when I did get out, I started to volunteer, first at the rehab that I'd gone to, and then I started rehab volunteering at criminal justice organizations.

And I was working with people who were in diversion programs, and I was working with people who might have otherwise gone to prison, but they had drug habits and things like that. and I was kind of like a volunteer house manager and there was shakedowns and there was all kinds of you know and I was running groups and I said this is this I feel great this is what I want to do for the rest of my life this is like this is what I want to do and one of the and the third organization I volunteered for even then they asked me to join their board of directors so I'm a couple of years out of prison at that point. And they want someone like me on their board of

directors. They want someone who has lived experience. And I joined the board of directors of family reentry, which is, at the time, was a large criminal justice organization in Connecticut out of Bridgeport. And I'm thinking, wow, I really have like a path here. So I went to the pastor who was at the church that Lynn and I were going. to. And because I'm Jewish, we went to, we went to temple on Friday nights and on Sunday mornings. We went to church. And so we were kind of like really into this kind of spirit, AA, spirituality, religion thing. And I went to the pastor and I said, I don't know what to do with my life. I'm trying to figure it out. And he looked at me and he said to me, I think you should go to seminary. I think

you should go to divinity school and I said what's that right and and he explained to me it's where people go to learn about faith and they become ministers they become you got to go to divinity school it wasn't even something you were even thinking about like that just came out of left field well dude first I'm Jewish right so I don't even really know what he's talking about and I said I said well why would I want to do that and he said look if you go to a progressive seminary or progressive divinity school, like Harvard or Yale or Union Seminary in Manhattan or one of those, it's basically about social justice. But it can continue kind of your trajectory of where you were from being a lawyer and you can really do a lot of good for society. You know, you're not just

kind of like being buried in a halfway house kind of thing. And I said, all right, let me look into it. And I applied. And I did apply to Union Theological Seminary, which is up at Columbia University in Morningside Heights in Manhattan. And it was the first time anywhere, outside of an AA meeting, I had to actually write my story down. I had to tell them all about my felonies and what happened and my path and everything. And they accepted me.

So in 2009, I started at Union Theological Seminary, and I went there full time for three years. And when I graduated, I got a master of divinity. and became a reverend. And in the meantime, Lynn and I got married. Okay. What happened? I thought you said you got the Dear John letter.

You didn't say that. Oh, no, no. Nope. So what happens when I got back from prison, we saw each other at AA meetings. And, you know, there's this magnetic thing that pulled us back together. And so we did get married in 2009. Okay. And so I go through seminary and, you know, we're.

We're practically penniless, and I'm a student at this point, and I hadn't been in school for 27 years. For a limited time at McDonald's, enjoy the tasty breakfast trio. Your choice of chicken or sausage McMuffin or McGrittles with a hash brown and a small iced coffee for five bucks plus tax. Available until 11 a.m. at participating McDonald's restaurants. Price excludes flavored iced coffee and delivery. Book club on Monday. Jim on Tuesday. Date night on Wednesday.

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You know how to read. You know, it's like so much reading and so much stuff. And law school was easy compared to seminary, at least for me. But when I got out of seminary, I started working at this inner city church in Bridgeport, which is all black and Latino church. That's perfect for you.

And it was perfect. It was frigging perfect. Lynn and I were the only white people there. But they were accepting. They were beautiful, beautiful people. And almost everything I learned about, like, criminal justice, was from, and it was right across the street from the nonprofit that I was on the board of directors of. So almost everything I learned about criminal justice, and I learned about

the plight of the oppressed, and what happens in these marginalized communities, and especially in communities where they have like an embodied relationship with the criminal justice system. It's like, you know, you come from the suburbs. Nobody goes to prison, but in these neighborhoods, like a lot of people go to prison. It's just part of the culture, unfortunately. I was just say, Colby's heard me say this over and over again. I'm like, look, if you're a middle class white guy and you go to prison, everybody gives up on you. Nobody wants to help you. That's right. Nobody sends you money. Nobody comes to see you. Nobody. They're all embarrassed of you. They're ashamed. You should be ashamed. And they give up on you. Like, if you're a black guy,

your baby mamas drag your kids up to the prison to see you they send you money your mother comes to see your father like everybody you know your cousins everybody you have a tremendous you have more support in prison as a black guy than you do probably on the street that's right and and it's it's amazing to sit here and think and see see that happening and you're like i can't get somebody to send me you know 50 bucks so i can buy honey buns and some coffee. Yeah. And this guy's got tons of money on his books.

And every visitation, they're calling his name. He's got problems where he's like, man, man, I'm going to, I got a problem. On Tuesday, one of my baby mamas comes and the other one wants to come. And I'd rather see her, but she's coming with my kids. And I want to see my kids. And it's like, like, I don't know what to do. I got to tell one of them. I got to come up with a store.

I got to tell one of it. And I'm thinking, nobody's coming to see me. That's not a problem. Like, that's a problem you want to have. It's brilliant. And what people don't know about being in prison is that it's really a community in there. And for those of us who for years were in isolation and we're looking over our shoulders and we're doing all kinds of crazy stuff, the first real, I mean, I had community because

I had gone into AA, but there's a real community in prison and you kind of learn how to live together in this community. So I'm learning now. I'm actually like a minister. I became baptized while I was in seminary. So now I'm considering myself a Jew and a Christian. I consider myself a double-belonger. I don't know if that's cool with anybody else,

but it's cool with me. And I'm learning like, you know, these are people who have like no resources. They have no money. And for example, I was on worship rotation. So like every four or five weeks, I had to be up there on the, and give a sermon. And so it's one, it's one Sunday where I'm giving a sermon. And Lynn comes, because Lynn's coming every Sunday with me.

And she goes to this overpass that's not far from the, not far from the church where there are homeless people, you know, under the overpass. And she says, and she said, look, do you guys want to come into the church? and what is happening and i'm telling you and it's like she's like this little thing and she's out there you know and she's saying you want to come into church you know my husband is is preaching this morning and and they don't want to come into the church so she starts negotiating with them she says to them what do you need and they're saying to them they're saying to her well we could use a jacket we could use a blanket and she said come into the church we'll get your blankets and and and jackets

So she brings these 20 people in who are like following her in. They're all sitting like in the back row and they're homeless people, right? Which is great, right? And she comes up to me and she said to me, listen, I got him in here, but we promised them. We? Yeah. Did we do that? Yeah.

We promised them jackets and blankets. And I said, where are we getting that? This church has like no money. Right. But we're living in Greenwich. Right. But we're, but I'm going up to Bridgeport every day to work. So we go to the rich churches in Greenwich and we say, listen, will you donate some jackets and blankets to these people up in Bridgeport?

And of course, of course they did. That's, you know, that's what that's what people in rich churches do. It's like, you know, you know, we'll go cook a meal for you or, you know, they want to do outreach. Right. So I'm living this like life where I'm living in Greenwich and I'm going to A.A. there and all these like captains of industry and lawyers and hedge funders and everything who are going to go to prison. Everyone says, go see prison Jeff. That's my nickname. That's my nickname at A.A. Prison Jeff. Go see Prison Jeff. And but I'm with all these very poor people in Bridgeport. And they're only like 20 minutes away from each other. And so I start blogging about it. And it was like early blogging. And I'm blogging about how crazy it is to like be living in like one of the richest towns in America and working in one of the poorest towns of America. And I'm blogging about how like in the morning there's like 200 business people lined up on the train platform heading from Greenwich down to Manhattan to go to work.

But on the other side of people going north, there's like me and a couple of men. maids and maybe some day workers going up to Bridgeport, there's like six of us on the platform. There's like 200 people on one side of the platform and like six of us on the other. And it's like fascinating to me. I'm blogging about it. So I get a phone call from this guy and he tells me he's a reporter at a hedge fund magazine. I didn't even know there were hedge fund magazines. And he said he's a reporter. And he asked me, he goes, are you? the guy who's writing that blog. Are you the minister to hedge funders? I guess I didn't know that.

Right. I said, well, I'm ministering here and I'm working with the hedge funders in AA, but I've never quite put those concepts together. And I talked to the guy and we arrange an interview and I like run into the kitchen. And I said to Lynn, I said, I think our big idea has come. Like this is incredible. Like minister to hedge funders. This is like a great idea. So we decide we're going to start what turns out to be the world's first ministry to support white-collar criminals and their families. And we don't know what it's going to be.

We don't know if there's going to be anybody who's going to pay attention. We don't know anything. But we know we don't want anyone to go through what we went through. And we look online at that point. There's nothing we can find. And we start this ministry. and we go to one of the big churches in Greenwich, and we say, listen, we need a home.

Can you be our, can we be your outreach ministry here? And they say yes. And, but what, what the pastor says to me, he said to me, look, but you need to prove to me that there's actually a market. Right. You know, are people going to actually sign up for this? So he basically counsels me and he said to me, I think you should take this thing on the road and find out if there's a market.

So for the next six months, we hit conferences. I am, we're doing sermons all over the East Coast. We are, we're out there and we're getting this incredible response from people who are like basically hiding behind their blinds who are afraid to go out in public. They've been kicked out of their clubs. They've been kicked out of their social communities. Their kids are being ostracized.

And in this weird way, we're giving them a voice. And why have they been? because because they're all white-collar criminals yeah just making sure yeah yeah and and and now they're starting we're starting to connect with us and we start to build this community this community around it so in 2016 what happened was we decided to start this white collar support group and this and and but everyone spread out all over the country and so at the time it was the precursor to zoom I think it was go to meeting and we said we're going to start it online and see what happens see if people will come on and our first meeting we had four people but it was like just like a zoom meeting now

there's four people on the screen and it was like as soon as we started talking we realized like all of us had like the same story all of us were going through the same things and it started to build and then like one magazine found out about it and then another and there started to be a lot of articles and people started to find us. It's building steadily at that point it wasn't really self-sustaining but I'm no longer working in the church and I'm pretty much doing full time at trying to build this ministry when this nonprofit that I was on the board of directors is having some financial problem

in the, there's a fiscal crisis in Connecticut and they asked me if I'm going to step, if I could step off the board and become their CEO. And I said, you know, if you're going to ask a white-collar criminal to be your CEO, you've got to know what you're getting involved in. I mean, like the donors may have a problem with this. And the Department of Corrections might have a problem with this.

Are you, I was going to say, are you, well, are you still on probation? No, no, no, I'm off probation at this point. So they say, yeah, we want you to do it. And they hire me. And for three years, I become the CEO, this large criminal justice organization that has 100 plus employees and is very well thought of in the criminal justice community. community. And it's crazy. Like, it's like, right now it's not so crazy because there's a lot of people who kind of go into those positions now, not necessarily white collar, but people

who have been to prison who are in these positions now. But this was like before the big movement where they would allow people with lived experience to take on senior roles in these criminal justice organizations. And there I am doing it. And I'm doing it for like two, two and a half years. and we're still doing this ministry and I realize that what people really need is they don't just need a minister, they just don't need spiritual support. What they really need is lawyers that they can trust

because the lawyers are, you know, you've worked with lawyers, right? You know, it's like they have no idea what we're going through. And I know from experience now with a lot of these lawyers that they're really not providing for their clients what the clients really need. You know, maybe they're getting, maybe they're representing them through sentence, but they have a very poor track record, most of them. And, and then these people are, they're just like, they're just sent off the prison and they come home and they don't know what to do.

And the lawyers have not prepared them and nobody, nobody has any information. So I decide, listen, what I'm going to do is I'm going to try to put my application in to get reinstated to the law, which is not easy. Right. But I put my application in and then COVID hits. And I got to kind of wind through that whole process. And it takes about three years. And at the end of the three years, I find out I'm literally every day checking the docket at the appellate division. in the second judicial department.

So that's in Brooklyn. And every day I'm checking online on my phone to see whether or not there's been a decision as to whether or not I got my law license back. Right. And I'm freaking out. You know, it's like... It's been a long time. And it's like, I'm either going, in my life, I'm either going plan A or plan B, right?

Plan A is I'm going to be a lawyer again. Right. Plan B is, I don't know what plan B is because it's like I got a ministry here and I and I no longer the CEO of that company. I've like put most of my eggs in the lawyer basket. So I don't really know what plan B is going to be. And so it's this one morning now in May, May 5th of 2021. And I'm sitting kind of in the chair in the living room.

And I open my phone. And, you know, the writing is really small. Yeah, yeah. On the docket. Yeah, on the docket. You know, it's like I got to like squint practice. to see it. And I'm, and I'm looking like every day just to find, you know, people versus Jeffrey Grant. And it's people versus this, people versus that every single day for like months. And I open it

and I see, like, I think that's my name. So I, you know, so I open it. And it's, that's my name. And I'm scared to death because now I got to read it. Right. And I click on it, and I read it, and it's one page. It's just one page, and it's basically just one paragraph. And all it says is, what it says is, and I'm just going to paraphrase, what it says is, is that as of that morning, so this is like at 4 o'clock in the afternoon on May 5th. So as of that morning, they had restored me to the roles of attorneys. So I'm all already an attorney.

I'm an attorney again. been readmitted to the bar. And I said, I can't believe it. So I hit print on the air printer and I go to the printer and I get it out and I walk into the kitchen. And it just so happens that my wife is on FaceTime with her, with my stepdaughter. And I'm holding this piece of paper over my head smiling. And my stepdaughter sees me walk into the kitchen over my wife's shoulders and she sees me and she has a feeling that something good's about to happen and she hits record okay and i put it down in front of my wife and my wife reads it and she starts to cry and freak out and then she starts to dance like you know dance around the kitchen and it's and the whole thing is

recorded and the whole thing is recorded and we're crying and we can't believe it because i'm like i'm a lawyer again. Right. I don't have to do anything else. I'm already a lawyer. So we take a clip from it and and I send it out to maybe 20 of my best friends, just the clip. Right. And everybody knows what it means like right away. And, and with that, I had, I shifted from being the, like, just the reverend who's in who's running this support group to a lawyer who can then basically expand the ministry into things that people really need somebody to trust and who their lawyers would give respect to and I could really not just change their life spiritually or have them change my life but also I could really help them in the trenches and so that was about three and a half years ago

Right after that, right after that, I got a phone call from a reporter at the, because all of a sudden, then there were articles about how, like, the white collar lawyer who got his law license back and is now representing people doing white collar. Right. And I get a phone call from a reporter at the New Yorker magazine. And he said, we have a, we have a slot open for a fast track article, you got. want to be in the magazine. Did people say no to that?

Yeah. Are you kidding? The New Yorkers like about as high as you can get. Right? And he's all right. So we're going to do all the interviews. We're going to do everything. And at the end of August, this article comes out in the New Yorker.

And I'm telling you, you could divide my professional life up into before the New Yorker magazine and after the New Yorker magazine. Because as soon as that hit, it was like. skyrockets. It was like everybody wanted to join the support group. Other people wanted to interview me. We were hearing from documentary companies in Hollywood. I can't even tell you what was going on. It was like, and we didn't know what to do. All of a sudden we were like, we went from a relatively small support group to we were tripling in the amount of people who were signing up every, every week. And we went through some growing pains, but we

still doing the support group and that this coming Monday night is I think our 426 meeting weekly meeting so we've been doing it for eight and a half years and we have a white collar conference that we're that we're hosting this fall where we have brilliant people who are going to come together we're doing it all online and that whole thing is rolling out the law firm is like rolling out and like like all of a sudden I'm like living my best life you know I'm like living the life that you can't even dream of when you're in when you're locked up when you're laying you're a bunk staring at the ceiling it's like it's like you got to be kidding like like I'm lawyering I'm helping people I don't even consider any of it work because it's like what it's

what my passion it's what I want to do and and I have this wacky story that was just basically putting one foot ahead of the other showing up in an ADA meeting every single day and pretty much just doing God's work. Which led me to you, frankly. And I got some other podcasts to opportunities and some very cool magazine articles and things and some other podcasters who help spread the gospel.

And anybody who gets in touch with me I don't care if they can pay me or not. I mean, if you got an hour of my time, I'm going to, you know, if you're in front of me for an hour, I'm going to help you figure it out or get a resource for you or whatever. And if they can pay, great. If they can't pay, I don't care.

This is not about the money anymore, you know. Doesn't sound sustainable. No. But, well, the people who can pay me are paying me pretty well. Okay. But it's like this fantastic life. Right. how did that happen? And the answer is, I don't know. I don't know. It's like, as you probably

know, like on any given morning, you know, I could wake up and be overwhelmed and not want to get out from under the covers and be in a fetal position like, like this is all too much or like, and you still have really bad days and on other days I'm living this incredible life that way beyond my wildest dreams and so I guess that's why I was really happy to get hooked up with you to be able to bring this message out there

that there is hope you know yeah no I'm I'm glad you made the drive after your your flight got canceled yeah I I mean I appreciate you come. I mean, is there, how do you feel? You feel good about this? I feel great about this. Okay. You know, I'll tell one of the things, it's that sitting opposite someone who I don't have to like go back to square one and explain everything to that I know that you know what I'm talking about is important. It's critical. And I know who your reach is. You know, I know the good work you're doing and how you're trying to get yourself out there and improve things for people. So that that was important to me. You know, I really had to check you out the right way.

Yeah. I was going to say, I've had two or three people in the last, like, probably every month, I at least have two or three people that somebody's texting me or, well, they start with like an email or something like, you know, and it's like, I got a target letter. You know, what's? And it's like, you know, how bad is this? I'm like, well, I don't know. What did you do?

You know, they're like, what can I talk to you? I got to ask somebody something. And, you know, typically what I do is I direct, you know, I hear them out, okay, it's not that bad. You know, you've got the guys that call you up and they're. truck and they're ready to get themselves and it's like okay bro that you know listen you know you're looking at a couple hundred thousand dollar fraud this is not the end of the world yeah you think it is but it's not you did you make through high school yeah you're going to be fine yeah that's right

you're saying like this is an opportunity that you can you can take this opportunity to kind of rebuild your life yeah reset your life and it's not that bad um and then you know you kind of talk to them and then i usually direct them to i usually direct them to like the uh the public defender because they don't have resources at this point it depends it is. Right, right. But yeah, I've had multiple guys. And then I have the guys that I actually have a guy right now that, listen, he texts me every week or two that they haven't called me back. What's going? I'm like, listen, let me explain something. He's like, I'm ready to plead guilty. I'm like, I want to go to jail. I want to get to do it with. I go, right. He's like, so I don't

understand what's taking so long. I'm like, that's the problem. You've heard the term. The wheels of justice move slowly. I'm like, he's like, what do you mean? Look, even when they call you back, even when you plead guilty, even if you try and rush everybody, I said, you're, you're not going to be in prison for six months to a year. And at six months, I'd be shocked. It happens that quick. You have, you know, I'm saying? They're like, he's like, are you, I got to do? I have to deal with this for the next six months to a year. I'm like, yeah, go get a job, start working, start, don't plan long term, explain, you know, based on his thing, he's probably going to do a year, maybe two years in prison. And I'm like, not the end of the world. Start putting some money aside,

getting, well, where are I, you know, my apartment. This is not. Go rent a spare room. Like, look, you know, I have those that kind of, like, you might as well take a step back from the life you're living right now. Yeah, good for you. Start selling your stuff off, put a little bit of money, you know, in the bank. Like, don't get, you know, like, you have to understand you're going to start over, but look at it as a challenge, you know, I'm going to start over from square one. And am I the person that's going to be able to survive this?

Like, obviously, you are. Yeah. You're, you know, you're a smart individual. You've done this. You've done this. You can start over from ground zero. you know, or from, you know, zero all the way up, you can start over and someone's spare room.

I did it. Yeah. I'm not the smartest guy in the world. I got a degree in fine arts, bro. Like, I'm prepared to do nothing. That degree prepared me to basically commit fraud. Like, I can make fake documents like that. There's no, there's no market for that unless you're committing fraud.

So, yeah. So I explain, you know, these are guys with master's degrees and, you know, they have degrees in finance and they're, I'll never be able to, like, stop. stop. That's not true. That's you, that's you being negative. You can work through that. We are our worst enemies. You know, whatever's going on in our head, boy. Who is it? I wish I could remember who said this. It was you, you suffer. I forget what it was. Like, you suffer more in your own mind than you ever will in reality. That's the truth. You cause yourself more agony and anguish in your mind than the reality of it. And, you know, he's, what do I do? I'm like, well,

you go get two jobs. Go get a job and then a part-time job. You, you bust your ass like you go well what kind of a good job am I gonna get I'm you know and they always you know I was in the newspaper I was this or I'm under this I'm like right then you go work at McDonald's oh now you're too good for McDonald's listen you're gonna be in prison soon so cut that shit out that's right you know go work at McDonald's you know it how great would it be to be able to say I started at McDonald's and now I'm doing this that's right that's fucking amazing yeah but the problem is you do have to work at McDonald's for a little bit to say it you know and there's nothing wrong with that. No. So I've learned there's nothing beneath me. Yeah, that's nothing. I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, when I was

volunteering at those rehabs, I was clean up vomit. You know, that's what I was doing. I, I remember this is funny because I'm gonna cry. But listen, I remember I drop, I, I, because of writing stories in, in, in prison, I got out of prison, went to Walmart, spent 300 bucks out of the $400 I had that was given to me by another inmate. Wow. So it gave me 400 bucks. I spent 300 bucks buying new clothes. And then I had been a part of an option for a story I had written.

And they'd optioned it once and I got a check where that money's gone. And I happened to be in the halfway house. I'd been there a couple weeks. And they optioned it again. Really? And I got another check. My ex-wife called me. She's like, you got a letter here from some lawyer?

I'm like, from what? And she told me the name of the lawyer. I was like, oh, open the letter. And she opens the letter. She says, oh, my God. And I go, what? She goes, the fucking check for whatever, it was like $6,000 or something, and $7,000. And I went, I went, I go, oh, my God.

She goes, I can't believe this. And I said, oh, my God. I said, I'm coming to get the letter. I got to get the letter, you know. And I think she gets. gave it to my sister something. Anyway, I got the letter. I got the, get the check. I buy a, I buy a car for 2,500 bucks. Yeah. I buy a year's worth of full coverage insurance. I get some new tires. The money's gone. You know what I'm saying? Like it's already gone. And, and so,

anyway, I was, I actually, at one point, I used to go see my mom. You know, we'd go see my mom. At one point, my ex-wife was there. And she had dropped her car, she somebody dropped her off, whatever the case may be, she had to go get her car. And I said to her, she said, can you give me a ride up to drop my car off? You know, and she's combative. Sometimes, you know, she's, so it's more like an order. And I'm like, yeah, of course, of course. You know, pick her up, get in the car.

And we're driving my little, my little Jeep, right? And it's not like a cool Jeep. It's like a Jeep Jeep. It's like a 15-year-old Jeep Liberty, right? It's like a 15-year-old Jeep Liberty that's, you know, that's horrific. Yeah. And I'm driving it. And it's Florida.

And she goes. she starts messing with the AC and she's like, what's with the AC? I said, oh, I said, are you, are you hot? And she goes, yeah. I said, oh, hold on it. And I rolled the window down. And she said, your AC doesn't work. I said, oh, I said, no, that's for rich people. I said, you don't know what you're, what's happening. And she goes, oh my God. And then she goes, what's wrong? What's wrong with the radio? Like the radio won't work. I said, I turned, I said, is it on? She's it's on. And I went, oh, I said, hold on. And I hit the dash a couple times and it pops on because it had a short like if you went over you know speed bump it would go out so it hit the dash a couple of them and it comes on I'm like hey you're good

and she goes are you serious I said yeah I said it's kind of cool I'm like Fonzie and she goes she looked at me and she goes you have fallen so far oh yeah and I said I know right I said but it's great yeah it's great is that weird and she just shook her head like I can't believe this because you know she knew me, you know, she knew me when, like, I didn't, I never got my oil change because I'm changing cars. I'm changing cars so quickly. Yeah. Or you have somebody, one of the guys go get the oil change or you, you know, you just, you know, you're not, you're just not living a normal life. You know, it's like, no, no, you know, we're flying, you know, we're flying first class. I mean, I can't fly with the peasants. Are you serious? What? Spirit? Are you serious? Um, but yeah, that was hilarious where she was just like, oh, my God. Yeah. So, especially from her who had seen me, you know, be a maniac. But it was great.

I'd never felt better. Yeah. In my life, you know. I felt better than even than I feel now, you know? Oh, yeah. Of course. All of a sudden you have something to lose again. Yeah.

It's like a weird thing, right? Yeah, it's funny because I always joke like, I wouldn't care about going to prison right now. My problem with going to prison right now is that if you went to prison right now, in, I could only sustain what I have for a few months. So you'd be coming out of prison in six months and you'd be starting over from zero. So I might as well go for five years. You know what I'm saying? Because it's not the prison experience, which was terrifying before.

It was losing everything. And now I do. Now I have a whole bunch to lose. And so, yeah, it does. It slowly goes away, which is kind of a horrible thing in a way. Yeah. Well, some of it's a trauma, a trauma reaction to, you know. know, the, we don't really know how traumatized we are and how, and how beat up we are.

And, and, and, and, and that gratitude we have just for like little things and just to be able to, you know, just to be able to breathe or just to be able to have a meal, you know, and, you know, I, you know, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I'm, it's stunning sometimes. Just, I can, I could forget, I could forget, I'm, I'm home for, you know, I'm, I'm home for prison 17 years. Right. So I, you know, it's like, it could be a distant memory for me. But because of all these guys I work with, you know, that keeps it green.

It keeps it fresh. Yeah. But it's great. Yeah. I was thinking this morning, we were, my wife and I were walking and the fog, there was fog that was kind of coming in at a distance. And we're walking around this, you know, we live in a nice little, you know, nice, pretty, yeah. We're walking around this pond.

There's all these ponds and stuff. They have alligators in them and stuff. And we're walking around. We're walking around. And the fog is coming in. There's these houses and everything. And the trees are in the distance. So part of the trees are kind of behind the fog.

You can see them. I said, man, I said, that looks great, doesn't it? The way the fog's like that. And I said, man, that's awesome. I said, that looks so good. Something I would have never, ever, ever realized before at all. And she just looked at me. She kind of smiled.

And she was like, you know, and I said, are you making fun of me? She's, no, I like it when you notice. those little things, you know. That's the stop and smell the roses is real. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. And then these alligators came after us. No, I'm just sure. But, yeah, Florida.

Well, listen, I really appreciate you making the drive. Yeah, I hope this is, you know, I hope this is helpful for somebody, you know, that's, that's the goal, right? What is, where would you want people to go? I mean, we'll put whatever links you want, we'll put it in the description box. Yeah. but where would where do you want people to go and well this at this point there's probably three i mean to reach me as a lawyer it's grantlaw dot com okay and the the ministry that were and the support group

are prisonist dot org but now because we have a conference coming up we actually own white collar conference dot com that's an easy one to remember white collar conference dot com and um and we're so looking forward to this conference. And because just to bring the gathering of the tribe and to be able to treat ourselves with respect and dignity and demand that other people do too, you know, so we're doing everything right. We had it branded properly and we hired the right people and it's, we're really doing it the right way because no one's ever done this before. There's never been a conference by people who are white collar justice impacted, four people who are white collar justice impacted. Lots of conferences from lawyers and fraud examiners, but never won by us and

for us. So, you know, we're doing it with respect. Hey, you guys. I appreciate you guys watching. If you like the interview, do me a favor, hit the subscribe button, hit the bell so you get notified of videos like this. Please share the video to anybody that you think could be impacted by it. Also, we're going to leave Jeff's links for the websites in the description box. So you just go into the description, obviously, if you can't, you know, remember. You just go in the description box, click the link, boom, it'll shoot you right there. Really appreciate you guys. Thank you.

And also, please consider joining our Patreon. It's like 10 bucks a month. We put Patreon exclusive material on there. Really does help Colby and I make these videos. Thank you guys so much. See ya.